We are getting a bit far from the original question, which is what should new identifiers focus on. There have been several excellent suggestions that could go onto a menu of starter identifier projects. Bearing in mind the above discussion, what specific taxonomic groups might you want included on such a menu?
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I donât have a specific taxonomic recommendation but something Iâve noticed is that National parks often have a lot of âeasyâ observations that sit in needs ID because there are so many visitors from out of the state or our of the country who have no idea what theyâre looking at. So if you are familiar with a few species and live/play near a National Park, this can be a great place to share what you already know and learn a few more species in the area.
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Thatâs smart, thank you! I live not too far from the Golden Gate National Parks, and you are right that many observations there of really common things take a while to get their first ID.
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Iâd say it depends a lot on the region. If you limit it to one country or region it takes away a lot of the lookalike options, which means you can just focus on learning to pick the difference between one or two species. For example, I can ID magpie moths in Australia but wouldnât know where to start anywhere else.
A lot of the time itâs not so much a group as a few random species that are distinct from the rest of their groups - for example, most nightshades are very irritating to ID, even when you have a key, but there are a few here in Australia that are very distinctive and easy for beginners.
I think if I was trying to start a âeasy beginner IDâsâ project, Iâd include parrots (typically pretty distinctive if you remember to take region into account), bowerbirds (honestly thereâs only a few groups of birds that would be way too hard, but those are some really easy ones), monotremes (they so often only get IDâd to genus or family even though theyâre really easy to take to species or subspecies), koalas (same deal), a lot of butterflies, and a handful of very distinctive plant species (Brazilian nightshade, for example). Iâd definitely try to avoid species where ID depends on details that often donât get captured in photos, such as rodents, just because youâd get a lot of bad IDs from overconfident newbies. I think Iâd also include species that have a âkeyâ to IDing, like the Australian Ardea species, but only fairly simple ones (so we donât overwhelm new IDers).
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Iâve known a blue-and-gold macaw and can fairly reliably distinguish the species of macaws (or could, when they were in season), except for the great green and military macaws, which look the same to me.
Iâve been in Puerto Rico and heard common coquĂes, and identified them mostly in Hawaii. However, in Puerto Rico, there are several frogs that look similar (even if they donât sound similar), and thereâs also the upland coquĂ, which I havenât heard (I was in San Juan by the coast) but Iâve read that it sounds similar.
The genus Eleutherodactylus (which contains coquis) is challenging in that there are over 200 described species scattered across the New World tropical and sub-tropical areas, 13 of which occur on Puerto Rico. The coqui (E. coqui) is usually the most common species where it occurs, but distinguishing among any of the 10 species fewer than 100 observations will likely be a challenge for anyone trying to ID.
Okay, that one threw me a minute â koalas being easy to take to the species or subspecies level. I had to check the taxon page and see that there is only the one species.
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The hardest bit about koala ID is âis it a koala or is it a brushtail possum on an awkward angleâ, which come to think of it, is probably a good introduction to a lot of ID work really. Even the scat and bones are usually easy with some practice, which is great
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not trying to hijack this thread, but iâm interested in learning more about oaks and how to identify/differentiate them on my small ranch. do you have any suggestions on how to go about educating myself? a good resource to study acorns, for example? i know a texas live oak when i see one. beyond that, iâm lost, but want to learn, with the ultimate goal of being a good steward.
Oh, dear. Oaks are notoriously difficult because of their tendency to hybridize. Still most individual in most areas are assignable to species. I donât know a good reference for your area. Maybe someone else does.
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Hard disagree there. Some vertebrates are, but man, we could use more people that are good at Sceloporus and Aspidocelis in the American Southwest (I can do some but the whiptails get confusing quick for me). And thereâs just so many turtle observations. And anurans? Oh are they under reviewed
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@dtrently Eso que propones me parece muy buena idea. Me resultĂł muy Ăștil cuando algunos especialistas han dejado como comentario en alguno de mis registros, indicaciones detalladas de quĂ© partes o de quĂ© forma se deberĂa fotografiar al individuo para que sea mĂĄs probable poder identificarlo. Incluso el hecho de describir el entorno, por ejemplo en el caso de los hongos, cĂłmo es el ambiente en el que crecen, quĂ© tipo de lugar es, etc.
Tu propuesta podrĂa ser muy buena si hubiera alguna manera de implementarla.
Gracias por compartirla.
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When I read about the great ideas what identifiers âshouldâ identify,
- I donât know what they are and donât have the urge to find out;
- The ones I would like like to know more are far, far away, in places I have no plans to travel.
I think that for someone to take up identifying in an area, they have to come with an interest in it and at least one of: above average curiosity, a lot of experience or formal training.
I would advise anyone new (if they ask) to identify in the area they are interested in. I donât see how would it work to ask someone to start identifying an area with no prior knowledge, no resources and minimal support.
The assumption that everyone has a phone or camera and that they can make identifiable photos with them is incorrect. The expectation that a lot of observers will eventually progress to spending a lot time identifying does not hold either.
Consider this: If iNaturalist only accepted drawings or paintings as evidence, who would be identifying? The push to download the app and start loading photos is a big barrier to attracting identifiers.
There is no big Field Identification Challenge just big Take a Photo.
The iNaturalist Australia welcome page encourages sharing photos
âConnect with Natureâ
âExplore and share your observations from the natural world.â
Someone will identify it for you. Maybe, for a while.
There is no invitation to share your knowledge and help identifying - and there should be.
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That is a good idea âŠ
The problem there is that Texas falls outside the geographical area of the Peterson Guide to Trees and Shrubs, which is northeastern and northcentral. Which is a shame, because it has really good comparative diagrams of acorns of species with similar foliage.
Yes, there should.
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As a newer identifier, I think the suggestions of an invitation to potential identifiers, as well as a list of easy/easier ID options (with how to guides), would both be helpful.
Invitation - I never thought about identifying anything until seeing a few names of people I know in real life identifying my observations. An invitation after a number of observations in a certain taxon with links to how to identify guidelines, and other resources would make people aware of the need and how to get started. Difficulty rankings might help also.
What to identify - the suggestion of what youâre interested in makes sense. I observe moths most, so I ID some. After reading forum comments, Iâve tried
-Dandelions - working at learning Red-seeded Dandelion.
-Koalas-theyâre cute, so why not! No true need except for people to ID koala scat.
-Unknowns - started at plant / animal, fun self challenge to learn more taxonomy, and move to the next level - plants to tree, flowering plant, dicot, aster, goldenrod, etc.
-Annotations - some are easy, can be difficult to tell if alive/dead from photo, especially insects.
-Hedgehog Galls - on the someday list.
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Besides IDing unknowns and adding annotations, I think finding a group that commonly gets observations misadded would be a useful thing to do! e.g. when a genus and a broader order/family have similar names. For example, I track the genus Diatoma because observations sometimes get added to that instead of âDiatomsâ the much broader group.
Someone shared some other common ones when I asked about this in the forum a few months ago: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/any-way-to-fix-a-commonly-mistaken-taxa-selection/65191/2?u=cyanochic
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I donât track it, but I recently found a cicada in America identified as Cicada, a genus in the Old World. I put Cicadidae, with disagreement. In western North Carolina, I havenât heard any cicadas in a few weeks.
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I believe anyone starting can ID any taxa as long as they do some preliminary research - primarily checking species possible in area (ping local experts and ask them where one could look - links and such), each of their recorded distributions if any, type localities, their distinguishing characters (beyond inat comments or taxon page photos) from actual published sources.
so sometimes people can go from top-down refining IDs as they continue to notice any particular clade characters well, or start from genus (which probably is identified by experts across world - you will recognise those) to species (for this, its better to know lookalikes which may not be even on iNat early in journey, and to understand which taxon are hard from photos - because there is no revision or lack of types or genitalia dependency and such)
As long as any new identifier keeps learning and correcting their or others IDs from community discussions or new revisions or such, i think its all fine. (double check published sources if you are mass IDing a species not possible for that region from seeing past iNat RGs or such - they all could be misused AI records)
In India, I started with IDing what I know best - birds and butterflies, then I learnt from community and online resources and moved to other taxa (snails, seashells, moths, spiders, seaweeds ⊠would love to learn local mosses, ferns and grasses soon) that I felt were not getting enough attention here (birds and butterflies seems to be popular now with more identifiers here) - so i guess the best strategy for new identifiers is to pick something they know or atleast curious of and then learn more of those to ID - there is a project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/observations-with-id-tips that can help them for now, and also there is another curious project that they can contribute (again I encourage to do your own research first if you are fixated on fixing something) - https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/pre-maverick
and they can also contribute to https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/jeanphilippeb/73398-draft-for-creating-projects-for-unknown-observations where AI has been confident of something and already classified for those unknown observations (bcoz those photos could be identifiable - compared to finding all low quality unknowns on your own and able to fix only few)
ofc, another best way for new IDers is to start clearing IDs around their area (i use 500km circle filter on map) of taxon they themselves observed and diagnosed properly - even if community diagnosed it, try to observe if you could find something distinguishing from pics itself or else ping those IDers and ask, they would help - Never agree and turn self observation to RG because of another expert ID or such without checking and confirming it first.
some of our observations even if stuck at higher levels can really be moved further (almost all my observed IDs are at genus or species) if one takes few minutes to research and learn from iNat community and others with steps i said at top.
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